3 Zombie Films Set In Florida

On January 16, 2013 by Nelson Fernandez

1. Day of the Dead (1985)

If we’re going to talk about zombie films, we’ll have to drop the name George A. Romero a few times. Because Romero is the father of all things zombie as we know them – shopping malls under siege, ill-fated relationships among survivors, silly zombies and even sillier humans.

Romero set the last instalment of his Dead trilogy (also featuring 1968′s Night of the Living Dead and 1978′s Dawn of the Dead) in Florida. The first scene of Day of the Dead was filmed in Fort Myers and Sanibel Island. Furthermore, the theatre shown in the opening is the Edison; opened in 1920 and now used as offices.

The film begins with a small group of scientists and military staff trapped in a bunker. In the outside world zombies rule, and infesting the underground base is next in their agenda. After seeing how sour things become among the humans, one can’t help but wonder if they would be better off with the flesh-eaters.

2. Shock Waves (1976)

You thought a zombie was bad enough? Imagine a Nazi zombie then. Exactly, the ultimate baddie. Shock Waves belongs to the zombie films subgenre that combines swastikas with the undead and, unsurprisingly, its plot can’t be anything but ludicrous.

A group of friends find themselves stranded on a remote island somewhere off the coast of Florida. Unfortunately for them, the island is home to a mad former Nazi and his group of soldiers who are “neither living, nor dead.”

3. Automaton Transfusion (2006)

Films can have elegant, evocative titles such as East of Eden or The Thin Red Line. Then you have Automaton Transfusion. But, to be fair, zombie films have never been famous for their subtlety.

This is another zombie flick set in Florida, and shot on location in Orlando. Its story goes more or less like this: it happens that when people in America was relying on the US Army to win the Vietnam War, they were busy developing a method to reanimate the dead. Thirty years on, the army reopens the project with, as one can expect, horrible consequences. As usually happens in zombie films, the apocalypse is unleashed by the incompetence of humans. Would that be the case in real life?